Evernote, Feedly hit by distributed denial of service attack

Evernote announced yesterday that its online services suffered disruption after being hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The popular notetaking service took to Twitter to make the announcement.

We're actively working to neutralize a denial of service attack. You may experience problems accessing your Evernote while we resolve this.

DDoS attacks are launched by sending huge amounts of data to the target server in an effort to slow it down or to knock it offline altogether. These attacks sometimes involve compromised PCs, whose owners are usually not aware of their involvement.

By most accounts this appears to have been a minor hiccup in the service. Last year, cyber criminals broke into the company's systems and were able to access user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords. The latest attack, however, seems to be more limited, as no accounts were compromised and no data was lost, the company claims. According to Evernote spokeswoman Ronda Scott, the attack started around 2:25 p.m. PT and the company had it under control by 6:15 p.m. PT.

Although attack efforts are continuing, effects have been mitigated. "We expect that there may be a hiccup here and there in the coming hours, but Evernote is now accessible," Scott said.

In what may seem like a related attack, news aggregator Feedly has also been taken down since this morning and expects to come back online later today. According to a post in Feedly's blog, the hacker group is asking for ransom to make the attack stop but the company has resolved not to give in to those demands.

Feedly's CEO, Edwin Khodabakchian, stated "We’re making some changes to our infrastructure that will allow us to bring feedly back online. However, these things take some time to put into place and it may still be a few more hours before service is restored. [...] Remember, none of your data was compromised or lost in this attack. [...]

We are working in parallel with other victims of the same group and with law enforcement."